The Existential Crisis of Barrenness in the Hebrew Bible

Being the curmudgeon I am, I’ve previously tried to argue that Jephthah may not have literally burned his daughter to death, but that the sacrifice was deferred and in a sense became the loss of progeny.¹ There’s no particular theological consequence to this, rather I simply find it to cohere well with the account as [...]

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Barr on Natural Theology

The relevance of chapter 27, “Natural Theology within Biblical Theology,” in the 600-page (not including endnotes) The Concept of Biblical Theology eluded me until the conclusion. The author writes:
Biblical theology—not only in its ‘canonical’ forms—has tended to be a very closed, inward-looking discipline. […] The main attraction has lain in gaining the maximum concentration of [...]

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Barr on History in Biblical Theology

James Barr seems at his most trenchant when clarifying concepts normally taken for granted. Though we move easily between the various meanings of “history” in biblical study, Barr helpfully delineates its functions, though, as he himself points out, his categories are by no means mutually exclusive. I hope to make my paraphrase of Barr in [...]

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Alter on Translating the Tetragram

I have written on the different ways of dealing with the tetragram in translation here, but, as I just got my own copy of The Five Books of Moses by Robert Alter, let me quote him directly on his decision as a translator.
“Yahweh” would have given the English version a certain academic-archaeological coloration that I preferred [...]

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Christogenic Holy Land Experience

The autumn 2008 Harvard Divinity Bulletin published a criticism of a Holy Land theme park in Florida by Joan Branham. Ignoring the Bible kitsch, which is unavoidable, and the trivializing of the Gospel, I would like to focus on a couple of paragraphs representative of her, and others’, discomfort with the project.
The mixture of Jewish [...]

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Jonah in Light of Open Theism

The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence
John Sanders
The prophet announces the destruction of the Ninevites in categorical terms. His message of judgment includes no conditional element to the effect that Nineveh will be destroyed unless there is widespread repentance on the part of the people. The very reason Jonah refuses to announce his message [...]

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The Place of the Tetragram

Whatever one may think of the Catholic Church’s recent ban on the divine name in liturgy, it’s absurd to think that this was done on biblical grounds. Christendom’s use, or rather, neglect of YHWH is heavily influence by the Judaic position, and if that’s considered legitimate on the grounds of the value and continuity of [...]

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Aleph-Bet

The ancient Jews were primarily an oral/aural society, just like neighboring peoples, just like all civilizations until relatively recently, and this is born of unearthed material culture and what can be gleaned of the culture from the Hebrew Bible. In both parts of Scripture, the people are listeners, and God’s word is read and explained [...]

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Nomenclature

Since the Bible is a collection of literatures, it is helpful to distinguish between the parts of the whole. Pentateuch, minor prophets, gospels, catholic epistles, are all helpful designations, even though the taxonomy is often arbitrary. What should the largest portions be called?
Old Testament and New Testament:

OT seems antipodal and inferior to NT. A “covenantal” [...]

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Anachronism and Jurisprudence in the Quran

“Be sure I will cut off your hands and your feet on opposite sides, and I will cause you all to die on the cross.”—Sura 7.124

The setting is a threat made by Pharaoh to his magicians, who, in this first quranic retelling of the Moses story, instantly confess their submission [al-islam] to the God of [...]

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